Full-time teacher salaries declined by an average of about $2,000 after Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 10 [in 2011], restricting collective bargaining rights for most public employees, according to a study from a conservative legal group.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty report released Tuesday called the average inflation-adjusted base pay decrease "statistically significant." Over the same period, the average years of experience for state teachers dropped less than a year, to 14.2 years of experience....

The study says that the average salary and fringe benefits were $2,095 and $5,580 lower, respectively, when averaging the salary level of the three years before Act 10 and during the three years after the law passed.

That'll encourage the talent to enter the teaching profession!

Amazingly the WILL stink tank and righties are trying to use this report to imply that less classroom experience and less pay for teachers is a good thing for Wisconsin, because it allegedly saved a handful of dollars in property taxes. Or something about how it's not so bad because the state is merely mediocre and not a full-fledged disaster (yet). Nice value system, dumbasse. And you wonder why people with talent don't want to locate here?

Stroebel opposes tax or fee increases to help pay for what some claim is a crumbling state transportation system. He said other studies show a different picture for Wisconsin's roads.

A report by the conservative Reason Foundation showed Wisconsin's highway ranking improving from 31st in 2009 to 15th in 2012.

Stroebel said that in the Reason Foundation report, the four states ranked as having the worst roads have prevailing wage laws and no right to work law. The 10 states with the best roads, he said, do not have prevailing wage and have instituted right to work.

This is quite reminiscent about how ALEC rates bankrupt, failing states like Kansas and Louisiana in their top 10, while booming states with surpluses like California and Minnesota rank in the bottom 10. Anyone who trusts a right-wing stink tank's ratings as a basis for policy is either a paid-off liar or a blubbering fool who couldn't get elected in any part of the state worth a fuck (in Stroebel's case, I'll go with the latter).

But Dewey wasn't done. He has a solution to the state's huge Trasnportation Fund deficit.

Prevailing wage sets a minimum pay level for construction workers on state projects, while right to work laws prevent workers from being required to pay union dues as a condition of employment.

"That is a place that we need to move to," Stroebel said. "We've begun to move there now with right to work and a partial repeal of prevailing wage, but we need to go all the way there. And then those are the things that are going to help us stack up better."

Yes, because rating higher with the "Reason" Foundation is a much more important thing than having stable revenues to fix roads or encouraging high quality on those repairs through better standards of pay. These people don't have a goddam clue about attracting that talent that produces a quality produce or service, do they? Nor do they seem to understand that an economy generally does better when everyday workers are paid more and are treated with respect.

1 comment:

Stroebel last November sponsored a bill for shifting Fed road-building monies from local work to State projects, exempting local projects from Federal prevailing wage laws.

Now he's out quoting Reason's 2014 study that covered roads up to 2012.I can't help but think that their 2011 study with WPRI is still in the works for WisGOP (http://reason.org/files/rebuilding_wisconsin_interstates_toll_financing.pdf), pushing the idea of our State forming public-private partnerships--using public tax money for private uses and gain, as we have seen with WEDC.

Reason, started in the early '70s with Koch money (also since funded from Bradley Foundation), has been the leading privatization advocate nationally. David Koch is still a trustee.

About Me

This cat's a 40-something libation-enjoying gabber still trying to do the right thing. Watch his crazy adventures as he works and stumbles his way through the great world of public service in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, while keeping tabs on Bucky Badger and the next Great Depression. I'm told I'm big in Oshkosh.